I drove by this house in my neighborhood today. It’s one of those houses that you find yourself staring at instead of focusing on the road and the stop sign in front of you. I nearly forgot I was driving, and just sat at the intersection for a moment, staring at the house. It’s not a particularly beautiful house – it definitely needs some exterior work. But in its own way, it’s fantastic. It’s a "modern" house in the same sense than a Frank Lloyd Wright house is a modern house. Harsh, sharp angles and lots of windows. I noticed today for the first time that it seems abandoned, and while I was sitting there at the stop sign, I found myself wondering if it was on the market. It’s ridiculous, because I’m not in any position to be buying a house, and certainly not one as large as this one. It’s almost ugly, but the potential that this house exudes is just … I can’t even explain it. I want this house. At the very least, I want to see what it looks like inside. I want to wander around, run my fingers across the banister leading to the second floor, talk to it, learn its personality. A house without personality isn’t worth much at all, in my humble opinion. The four walls that surround a family are almost as important as the people who live in it. In a sense, their house is like another member of the family. My apartment has character, and maybe that’s why I’m happy living here, at least for the time being.

So when I finally came to my senses and moved past the intersection, I started thinking about houses I have loved. The first, of course, was the house I grew up in: an old farm house from the turn of the century. It had a beautiful wrap-around porch with a trellis and trumpet vines that grew up it in the spring. It had a large two-story main entry way with hardwood flooring and the front staircase leading up to the bedrooms with a window seat half-way up. Each floor of the house seemed to have its own personality. The first floor was grand and impressive, with a formal dining room with a beautiful hardwood floor, raised up a step, and a large window facing out the side of the house; a parlor of sorts in the front of the house that my mother decorated with white couches and glass tables; the livingroom with the piano and our television – less formal, but still orderly and impressive; the study that gave off a serious air. Upstairs was far more informal and cozy: the bedrooms with their odd shapes and little closets that somehow managed to hold a lot of stuff, the landing at the top of the back staircase, and the beautiful balcony looking out over the backyard. The basement was almost mysterious, or at least it was to a small child. There seemed to be endless hiding places, nooks and crannies that held forgotten memories from the people who once lived there.

There was another house that I loved. In Huntsville. Once I started driving, I would drive past this house every chance I got. It was old, or at least built to look old. Old and majestic, with a small tower in the front – perhaps an attic room, and a beautiful wrap-around porch. It reminded me a lot of the house I grew up in, and I watched that house from afar, alwasy wanting to learn its secrets and know its personality.

So seeing this house today got me thinking about all the houses I’ve loved – the ones I’ve known and the ones I’ve wanted to know. One of my favorite trip memories was when we went to visit Taliesen West in Arizona. Frank Lloyd Wright is a hero to me. And so I find that I’ve got this huge dichotomy when it comes to architecture preferences – I love old, beautiful, Victorian houses, and I love modern, sharp, edgey houses. You will never see me puchase a plain house. A cookie-cutter house. I will rent until I find the house that is right for me. The one that calls out to me and begs for me to know it – to learn its character, make it a part of my family.

I’m a picky girl with very particular taste. I don’t like fancy things simply because they’re fancy. In fact, there are very few “fancy” things that I like. And it’s not just houses – it extends to just about everything: clothing, cars, yarn, sweater patterns, furniture… I like plain and simple, with just a touch of detail. Too much detail, and whatever it is loses its appeal.

I started knitting up my Chocolate Covered Cherries in a beautiful lacy cable pattern the other day. The pattern really is gorgeous – just a couple of yarn overs and k2togs, with a simple 6-st right-facing cable every eight rows. I saw it and fell in love with it immediately. So I started working up the sock. As I started knitting, I started feeling like I was letting this pattern and my beautiful yarn down. They weren’t working together. I loved them both, and wanted to do each of them the justice they deserved. I kept thinking if I just went a little further with it, it would all work out fine in the end. I turned the heel last night, and when I was done, I felt miserable about the whole thing. The pattern was lost, and the colorway of the yarn looked choked. It wasn’t a good match, and it honestly broke my heart.

So tonight, I ripped out what I had of the sock, rewound the yarn, and started over in a very simple k3 p2 rib pattern. The yarn is much happier, and I feel like I haven’t wasted this lovely stitch pattern on a yarn that doesn’t fit it. But it makes me sad for a couple of reasons: (1) I started the sock because I wanted to do something more interesting than the straight stockinette that my sweater was giving me. A simple rib isn’t gonna cut it. (2) I don’t have any yarn at the moment that this pattern will work with. I’m thinking that my next batch of dyeing will be some semi-solids. I love wildy variegated sock yarn – it’s lovely to look at and play with, but I want to knit socks with cables and lace and interesting patterns, and you just can’t do that when there are so many colors competing with the pattern. It’s too much.

In a way, it’s sort of a metaphor for my life at the moment. There are so many things I want to do, but I can’t do them all at the same time – the colors and the pattern don’t mesh, and you end up with a muddled finished project that looks messy and lacks any definition. I wish figuring out how to balance these things in my life were as simple as frogging the present, setting aside one part for later, and continuing on with the other. But it’s not.

I think it was Sir Walter Scott who wrote “Oh what a tangled web we weave.”